Amid the meteoric rise of the global freelance economy, entrepreneurs, creative nomads and independent teams are becoming a large majority of today’s workforce. As this new model for work develops, establishing productive working systems between contractors, businesses and talent becomes a key component to success.

For many businesses, managing the dynamics of an already dynamic ecosystem can seem arduous. The first place to start when designing a working system within such a dynamic environment is to address data points that must be verified as true for a working system to successfully function. These data points include worker’s level of competence, trust and likelihood of completing a job.

The startup Alehub may have a solution. Launched in 2017, Alehub is a blockchain-based digital platform that assists businesses in identifying and approving contract partners.

Alehub is the brainwork of a highly qualified team of project managers and entrepreneurs working in conjunction with the Russian research university ITMO, one of the leading IT universities in the world. Alehub has also partnered with Serokell, the former developers of the cryptocurrency project Cardano, to develop the minimum viable product (MVP) version and begin their technical research development thesis, also referred to as a yellow paper.

Alehub envisions that their platform can bring a newer and brighter future to human resources. The platform assists organizations with managing talent, assessing skills and formalizing contract agreements. The platform will also help facilitate reservations, payments, compensation and profit-sharing transactions.

Each of these functions uses multilateral smart contracts on the Alehub network. By using smart contracts through Alehub, organizations can assure greater safety and reliability and reduce costs associated with outsourcing professionals. With the inherent ability within smart contracts to automatically execute contracts, the project structure now exists that allows for the adjustment of business arrangement across the workflow continuum in real time.

Leapfrogging Prevailing Models

While similar freelance marketplace hubs like Upwork, 99designs and TaskRabbit currently exist, none are equipped to effectively address the need for legally binding contracts and remote labor control for freelancers worldwide.

“We see our labor exchange as one that’s heavily involved in the relationship between customers and executors, providing them with all necessary tools for managing the details of work performed,” said Mikhail Gromyko, CEO of Alehub.

“At the same time, the rights and fulfillment of duties of all parties to the relationship are adhered to and guaranteed by the automatic execution of multilateral smart contracts.”

Alehub looks to attract demand from both the traditional and cryptocurrency economies through a new ecosystem that Alehub is calling the “composite economy.” The composite economy is designed to protect users from harmful actions by business partners during the execution of orders. As a result, AML and KYC protocols have been baked into the system as a due diligence measure.

Tokenizing HR

Alehub’s featured security-token is ALE. ALE is the equivalent to a single share in the new economic system. The token will be used to pay interest as well as for casting a vote during strategic decision-making where the community is involved.

ALE’s liquidity is ensured in a manner similar to that of cryptocurrencies. As the currency for the platform, it allows for the payment of services of contracting participants without being tethered to a specific fiat currency. The fact that these transactions are situated on the blockchain makes tax authority oversights a relatively easy task. Additionally, participants are protected against currency fluctuations on any fiat currency exchange.

To assure liquidity, the ALE protocol is being mirrored on the platform, until stocks are ready to list tokens as their own protocols.

It should be noted that this system is compliant with the laws in myriad countries. Also, mining in Alehub is not anonymous, and miners are subject to mandatory verification procedures.

The Alehub team believes they are well on their way to revolutionizing the freelance industry. Their minimum viable product (MVP) is ready and can be downloaded from their website. Additionally, the release version is under development and soon will be added to GitHub.

“In order to make our platform more useful, we are now partnering with other business projects,” said Mikhail Gromyko. “By the beginning of 2020, we are planning to have our platform completely developed and published.”

GENERAL BYTES, a Prague-based bitcoin ATM manufacturer, has installed 10 new cryptocurrency ATMs throughout the Prague subway. With this latest move, commuters using the busy Prague Metro can buy and sell virtual currencies on the go. One of the busiest metros in Europe, over 1.2 million people pass through the Prague subway daily.

The company published an update on its website where it provides a detailed description of the location of each ATM. The new machines were installed in Můstek, Nádraží Veleslavín, Dejvická, Florenc, Černý Most, Zličín, Pankrác, Flora, Skalka and Hlavní Nádraží.

According to Coinatmradar.com, the Czech Republic now has 46 bitcoin ATMs, with 34 of these ATMs concentrated in Prague. Of the 3,138 bitcoin ATMs manufactured globally, GENERAL BYTES has now manufactured 27.63 percent, with their machines installed in every major city in the world. Their ATMs support the purchase and sale of bitcoin, litecoin, dash and monero.

In conversation with Bitcoin Magazine, Martijn Wismeijer, Marketing Manager of GENERAL BYTES, described his company as "veterans in the blockchain space who have been there from the very beginning.” He pointed out that the company was “the first to introduce sending cryptos via email” as well as the creator of the first BATMOne models.

Wismeijer said his company offers "seven different cryptocurrency ATM models as well as a point-of-sale (POS) called CortexPay.” These crypto ATM models are all based on a similar code base; however, he also explained that, even though the machines were similar in code base, there are some minor differences in the hardware design and a range of additional features. These features include the capacity of the acceptor, dispenser and recycler combinations as well as the acceptance of multi-currencies on a single machine.

The ATM models are called the BATM series ATM. BATM is the name of the platform created by GENERAL BYTES for producing the ATMs. These machines are further divided into the BATMTwo series (one-way and two-way options) and the BATMThree series ATMs.

According to Wismeijer, the one-way BATMTwo series ATMs were chosen for this project as there are already many two-way ATM locations in and around the city. “Installing the one-way BATMTwo models allows GENERAL BYTES to showcase the possibilities that abound for clients brand-wise with the optional BATMStand which transforms the machines into a free-standing unit.”

Wismeijer explained that clients can either run and maintain their servers or they can use the company’s cloud-hosted server, which allows operators to run their software on GENERAL BYTES’ server for a small fee.

Cryptocurrencies in Prague

Prague has been a growing hotspot for everything crypto for a while now.

There hasn't been much definition or regulation of virtual currencies in the Czech Republic, and the government is seen to be somewhat friendly to cryptos.

The subject matter is, however, being discussed in government circles as the Czech National Bank published a paper titled "Don't be Afraid of Bitcoin," where it declared that "Prague is home to a strong community of cryptocurrency users," while playing down the potential threats of cryptocurrency to the traditional monetary system.

Last year, Alza became the "first large European retailer" to add cryptocurrency payments to its website and install two bitcoin ATMs in its showroom locations in Prague and Bratislava.

The hip and trendy Holešovice district in Prague is also home to the famous Cryptoanarchy Institute, Paralelni Polis, an organization that educates the public on cryptocurrencies. Prague is also home to a couple of crypto startups like SatoshiLabs (makers of Trezor hardware wallets).

Tuesday, 29 May 2018

Zcoin, a privacy-focused asset, is launching a working version of MTP v1.2 (Merkle Tree Proof) — an ASIC-resistant proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm — on its testnet. Chinese mining conglomerate Bitmain had recently announced the release of an ASIC designed for mining the similar, privacy-based cryptocurrency Zcash, which ultimately led to some concerns in the cryptocurrency space, and Zcoin is looking to offer reassurance.

Founded in September of 2016, Zcoin was constructed to tackle decentralization and privacy issues on the blockchain. It was also the first currency to implement the Zerocoin protocol and provide financial privacy by using zero-knowledge proofs.

Created by Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich in June 2016, MTP is designed to target miner centralization caused by ASICs and permit entry to the mining space for CPUs and GPUs. Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine, Zcoin’s Chief Operating Officer Reuben Yap explained how MTP works to demonopolize the cryptocurrency mining space.

“When you have specialized machines, X dollars will get you a hash rate 1000 times stronger than if I spend X dollars on a CPU or GPU, so if I spend $2,000 on a bitcoin ASIC miner, I’ll get a higher performance than if I spent $2,000 on a GPU rig,” he said.

“MTP’s aim is to make the price and performance as close to each other regardless of whether you use an ASIC, GPU or CPU, so no one can gain an unfair advantage through the use of specialized hardware. It is back to the idea of egalitarian mining where Satoshi was expressing one CPU per vote.”

Yap pointed out that ASIC manufacturers like Bitmain are not incentivized to sell miners at more affordable prices. But, by allowing people to use their existing hardware, without requiring something specialized to remain competitive, everyone can be kept “on fair footing as opposed to only the miner manufacturers having control.”

The system was first published in January 2018 and was used to strengthen algorithms against attacks found in both academic peer reviews and Zcoin-funded MTP bounty programs. MTP can handle large memory sizes from two to eight GBs, which pits it favorably against other leading PoW systems like Scrypt, Equihash and Cryptonight.

MTP also discourages the use of botnets — infected computers that are controlled to mine cryptocurrencies — as its high memory usage would likely alert users of infected systems due to heavy impacts on a system’s performance. Botnets have often taken advantage of ASIC-resistant algorithms in the past, though MTP requires considerably more memory for proof computation like mining than it does for proof verification.

Zcoin is now refining its MTP code to prepare the application for extended testing. It will also be launching bounties for open-sourced miners and pool software prior to its release on the main net.

Atomic Stocks Overview

In traditional stock exchanges, retail investors in public markets are unable to switch from one position to another without first going into cash. For example, an investor looking to trade his or her Amazon shares for PayPal shares must first exchange these Amazon shares for U.S. dollars, before buying PayPal shares with these dollars.

This style of exchange creates unnecessary friction and expense because of a) transaction costs incurred on the sale of the asset, as well as on the purchase of the new asset; b) U.S. dollar purchasing power exchange-rate risk; and c) transaction fees paid to the broker that the purchaser is using, as well as the bid-ask spread that exists for each publicly traded stock (which occurs on both the sale of the previously held asset, as well as on the newly purchased asset).

Atomic Swaps

In the context of cryptocurrency, atomic swaps are a proposed feature that could allow direct conversion between two cryptocurrencies without having to use a third-party intermediary or exchange. By employing hash time-locked smart contracts, atomic swaps guarantee that parties will deliver the currency needed for the trade, or else the transaction is automatically canceled. These “all or nothing” trades preserve atomicity because they either take place or are canceled immediately. For example, customer A could directly trade his or her bitcoin for customer B’s ether with full confidence that the trade will either take place or terminate if either party doesn’t deliver their side of the bargain.

Atomic Stocks

Harnessing the principle of atomic swaps, direct stock-to-stock exchanges (Atomic Stock Exchanges) enable retail investors to avoid the forced conversion into cash that occurs when selling a stock to USD just to buy back another stock.

It is a commonplace occurrence to switch between stock positions for retail investors and financial firms, and the prevention of touching cash allows for the avoidance of transaction fees that would normally be incurred when making these trades, and the cost-saving consolidation of the bid-ask spreads on both of these stocks into one bid-ask spread. While the larger cost saving would occur on direct stock-stock swaps, there are incremental cost savings on the bid-ask spread as well.

Atomic Stock Exchanges could feasibly work with large-cap stocks that have deep pools of liquidity, such as stocks on the S&P 500, and the liquidity needed for making the trades would be provided by high-frequency traders (HFT) who could make up the gap that exists.

This would squeeze HFT margins, but as a commodity business that provides a middleman service, we imagine they would facilitate this as a way to make incremental revenues (if they have no other options).

By focusing on the needs of the average retail consumer, we realize that in many cases, the sale into cash is forced and doesn’t correspond to what the investor actually wants, which is to simply switch from one highly liquid position to another.

Atomic Stock Exchange: Practical Example

Let’s imagine for simplicity that only the S&P 500 is available and that we want to rotate out of Google stock into Facebook stock because we think that Facebook stock has been shifted off of its fundamental value due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Therefore, we want to exchange our Google shares for Facebook shares; because they are both denominated in USD, there is a ratio of what one share is worth relative to the other share. On the market close of May 4, 2018, one share of Google is worth 5.95 shares of Facebook stock. In this hypothetical exchange, shares are fractional, and you are able to exchange one Google share for 5.95 Facebook shares and vice versa.

The “spread” in this case would be the amount of Google stock you receive when making this exchange. You would only receive 5.93 shares of Facebook when you are doing this exchange, and the market maker is getting 0.02 Facebook shares in exchange for facilitating this transaction. These shares add up over time in favor of the market maker and serve as their profit once they liquidate them.

This spread dynamic could potentially cause an issue since market makers are now being paid by stock instead of in cash, unlike with normal bid-ask spreads. However, this could allow market makers to profit via the appreciation of these shares during the trading day as well. However, nothing would prevent HFT from liquidating the shares they receive as cash immediately as well, provided someone takes this trade.

Exchange Dynamics

To start, Atomic Stock Exchanges would charge no exchange fees. Revenue can be made by selling order flow and the right to trade on this exchange to HFT. The way the buy and sell process would work from stock to stock could be: when a sell order is placed, it is specified which position the firm would like to exchange into, and provided that this trade is available, it is filled by simply swapping shares. This is where HFT could be invaluable as a market maker and be able to profit off the spread. This would serve as a way to make a profit, and many exchanges try to obfuscate the fact that they make money off retail investors doing so.

Questions Worth Considering

What is the main issue that would have to be overcome to create an Atomic Stock Exchange?

It’s critical to figure out how to enable the purchasing of decimalized amounts of shares and how to pair users that are actually looking to swap shares with each other. In private markets, counterparties have broad control over their trade arrangements, but in public markets this utility hasn’t yet been harnessed. In other words, for atomic stocks to work, an Atomic Stock Exchange would have to create decimalized shares. When we consider that for a retail user of E-Trade or Charles Schwab, the cost of going from Amazon to Facebook is selling one and buying the other, each of which carries a transaction fee, and we see that this could be a huge cost savings for the average retail investor, even if a service had to be paid on the back end to enable a decimalized share service to exist. However, for an Atomic Stock Exchange to be profitable, it would have to support massive volume.

Is decimalization of shares in public markets the equivalent of decimalization for stock prices?

Before 2001, all stock prices in the U.S. were quoted as 1/16 of a dollar, creating opportunities for arbitrage, but also creating massive inefficiencies within markets as well. Decimalization has led to tighter spreads because of the corresponding smaller price increments and movements. With decimalization, the minimum price movement is now one cent, allowing for tighter spreads between the bid and the ask levels. For example, shares could be decimalized out to five decimal places, allowing for the equivalent trading of shares.

Would the theoretical lack of (or less) cash be an issue for this exchange?

Many exchanges make money by putting cash that hasn’t been invested into money market accounts. An Atomic Stock Exchange could allow for these kinds of cash holdings as well.

What about liquidity?

Atomic Stock Exchanges can be built on top of existing exchanges, meaning that retail investors can still switch to cash positions if they wish to do so.

Do any kind of similar trades already happen?

Institutional investors can already execute paired trades that never expose them directly to fiat currency. But retail investors miss out on this opportunity.

This paper is part of a research project being developed by Erik Kuebler and Oscar Avatare at the University of Washington. If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions, please email ekuebler@uw.edu or oavatare@uw.edu.

Sunday, 27 May 2018

Cryptocurrencies and exchanges were the focus this week. Coinbase is getting into the decentralized exchange business with its acquisition of Paradex, potentially opening up thousands of ERC-20 tokens to traders, depending on what the SEC ends up doing with regulations. The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange, continues work to implement a system to allow large investors to trade bitcoin directly. And Germany’s Deutsche Boerse is looking at getting into the cryptocurrency game. Finally, the city of Memphis had its first blockchain conference, which included keynotes from FedEx and a hackathon for various market segments that included some great prizes.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase just made an enormous play by acquiring decentralized relayer Paradex this week. Paradex bills itself as a decentralized exchange (DEX), meaning no third party is involved in holding the funds. Instead, users can use the platform to trade ERC20 tokens directly wallet to wallet. Paradex is built on top of the 0x (pronounced “zero x”) protocol.

Right now, Coinbase trades four coins: bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ether (ETH) and litecoin (LTC). Adding ERC20 tokens could significantly boost the number of digital assets it carries. Due to the ICO boom that has taken place over the last few years, thousands of different ICO tokens are now available.

Frankfurt Stock Exchange parent company, Deutsche Boerse AG, appears to have begun work on technology that will allow them to offer their clients bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related products.

Speaking at an industry event in London on May 23, 2018, Jeffrey Tessler, head of clients, products and core markets for Deutsche Boerse, said they are considering offering cryptocurrency products: "We are deep at work with it."

As reported earlier by The New York Times (NYT) and Bitcoin Magazine, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), is developing an online trading platform that would allow large investors to trade bitcoin directly. As news about the ICE platform continues to develop, Bitcoin Magazine spoke with lawyers Ben Sauter and Dave McGill of Kobre & Kim, a New York City law firm which specializes in disputes and investigations, to examine the regulatory issues surrounding the launch of such a platform, including swap contracts and the implications the ICE platform might have on cryptocurrency trading in the future.

In its first year, EthMemphis distinguished its place on the blockchain conference circuit for displaying an under-the-hood glimpse at what actually moves this young industry forward, specifically on the Ethereum network. The focus was on blockchain topics and projects applied to supply chain, healthcare, tourism/hospitality, education and law.

While Verge executives are claiming a DDoS attack is responsible for the recent serious delays on their blockchain, it appears that the problem may be more serious than the company is implying. The attack lasted more than a few hours and has resulted in over 35 million XVGs (worth approximately $1.7 million) being stolen. The theft occurred when hackers exploited a specific glitch in Verge’s technology by mining multiple blocks virtually one second apart using the same algorithm. This was the same tactic used in a hack just last month that saw over 250,000 XVGs disappear into thin air, forcing Verge to prepare a subsequent hard fork.

On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...

Stephanie and Adam sit down with Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra. They discuss his path towards solving the hard problems of remittance in real life, and the stablecoin system you've probably never heard of.

In partnership with the Distributed Event Series and the Let's Talk Bitcoin Network, "Distributed Dialogues" gives listeners a cross section of the cryptocurrency and enterprise blockchain ecosystem by giving voice to the people, ideas and projects that make it possible.

The following interviews came from Tatiana Moroz during the Distributed: Markets event. During the event, Tatiana interviewed a wide variety of the people who work in the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology space. Hearing from these people illuminates what is happening within the space whether recruiting internationally for a cryptocurrency exchange, building a peer-to-peer decentralized platform, disrupting supply chains or simply trying to create a more open world for financial transactions.

Proof of ProofCrypto Companies Raising FundsRunning A Peer-To-Peer Financial EngineTreated With HeatRecruiting for A Bitcoin ExchangeStarting A Decentralized Exchange on Ethereum

In partnership with the Distributed Event Series and the Let's Talk Bitcoin Network, "Distributed Dialogues" gives listeners a cross section of the cryptocurrency and enterprise blockchain ecosystem by giving voice to the people, ideas and projects that make it possible.

The following interviews were conducted by Tatiana Moroz, host of The Tatiana Moroz Show, during a recent Distributed: Markets event. Moroz interviewed a wide variety of the people who work in the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology space. Whether they are recruiting internationally for a cryptocurrency exchange, building peer-to-peer decentralized trading platforms, disrupting supply chains or simply trying to create a more open world for financial transactions, hearing from these people illuminates what is happening within the space.

Proof of Proof

Maxwell Sanchez is co-founder and CTO of Veriblock, a blockchain software development company that created proof-of-proof (PoP). PoP is a consensus protocol that leverages the Bitcoin blockchain's proof-of-work (PoW) to provide higher quality data integrity for services in healthcare, law enforcement and more.

Crypto Companies Raising Funds

Ayesha Kiani is managing director of Republic Crypto, a pre-sale token fundraising platform for individual and organizational investors. Before Republic Crypto, Kiani worked for SingularDTV and held numerous other roles in the venture capital space. She has a bachelor's degree in finance from New York University (NYU) as well as a J.D. from the NYU Law School.

Running A Peer-To-Peer Financial Engine

Adam Perlow is CEO of Zen Protocol, a consensus protocol which follows Bitcoin's style of transaction output while also allowing for Ethereum-like features such as smart contracts and support for multiple tokens.Treated With Heat

Rick Dudley is CEO of Vulcanize, a consultancy that helps companies formulate blockchain architectures that focus in particular on "federated systems" or "permissioned blockchains".

Recruiting for a Bitcoin Exchange

Ryan Andersen is an executive in recruiting and operations at the digital asset exchange Kraken. Like so many other companies in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, Kraken is seeking to massively grow its number of employees. Andersen explains the company's ever-present need for developers as well as accountants, customer service representatives, account management people and regulatory compliance experts.

Starting A Decentralized Exchange on Ethereum

Barath Rao is CEO of Leverj a decentralized exchange that is also "leveraged" in the sense that it can offer cryptocurrency futures contracts and risk management. Rao explains the perceived value of a decentralized exchange as well as what it has been like to launch one.

Frankfurt Stock Exchange parent company, Deutsche Boerse AG, appears to have begun work on technology that will allow them to offer their clients bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related products.

In December 2017, regulators in the U.S. greenlit bitcoin futures trading for the CME Group and CBOE Futures Exchange, but since then, no major European exchange has jumped in. Speaking at an industry event in London on May 23, 2018, Jeffrey Tessler, head of clients, products and core markets for Deutsche Boerse, said they are considering offering cryptocurrency products: "We are deep at work with it."

Tessler is quoted in Bloomberg confirming that Deutsche Boerse is “not at the same stage” as CME and that they want to make sure that they understand the underlying transaction “which isn’t the easiest thing to do.”

Two months ago, Deutsche Boerse announced a plan to work with the financial management firm HQLAX and R3’s Corda blockchain platform to implement a system that can offer more efficient securities settlement via a blockchain. HQLAX and R3 already have a solution for securities lending with a number of large banks, such as ING and Credit Suisse.

Tessler added, “Before moving forwards with anything like bitcoin, we want to understand the volatility and make sure clients are in line and make sure regulators are in line.”

About the Guests:
- Paige has been immersed within the peer-to-peer technology world since 2011. Prior roles with mesh networking and p2p storage startups in addition to organizing the San Francisco Bitcoin Meetup has provided Paige with an appreciation for the diverse applications of decentralized networks. She enjoys exploring ways to simplify explanations of complex topics, hosting crypto parties and is a proud participant in the Free State Project. She has a BFA in Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

- JW Weatherman is a software security expert that has been working with Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years. He's the author of the Bitcoin Threat Model found at http://btcThreats.com . A successful entrepreneur in the software start-up space, JW is currently the lead contributor of the open-source project Mathbot, a game that teaches kids math and programming by giving a robot a series of graphical commands. It's an intuitive and fun way for kids to learn. Mathbot is free to play, but allows parents to reward kids in bitcoin for mastering a topic. If we succeed, the public schools will stop pretending to teach math.

This is our debut on 1100 Am KFNX in Phoenix AZ. We have taken the bold move of going on to a major conservative talk network during afternoon drive. Our goal is to talk crypto basics to the masses. We air live on wed. afternoon 4pm to 5pm pst.We would love audience participation so feel free to join in (602-277-KFNX) http://1100kfnx.comA little rough for our 1st episode, it is a new line up and our goal here is to get outside of the echo chamber to reach and create new users of crypto currency. Remember when adoption was everyone's goal?Well this is that!

As part of New York Blockchain Week, Distributed Business Accelerator (DBA) publicly launched their global blockchain accelerator community designed to cultivate an ecosystem of blockchain startups.

The CEO of the project is Tom Tao, formerly of IBM and Chainbase Accelerator. In opening remarks, Tao gave his outlook on the industry and extrapolated on where he saw DBA adding value to the blockchain ecosystem, noting that “for startups, obtaining resources and attention quickly is one of the critical factors to attain success.”

Tao laid out the goals of DBA which include equipping promising blockchain startups with all the tools necessary to accelerate their growth, giving them access to an incubator in which they can develop their product and helping them to plan out business strategies to deliver that product to the world.

He also touched on current issues which seem to be creating a general environment that leaves individual blockchain ecosystems too isolated. He considers the trend of short-term token trading and speculation, combined with early adopter incentive structures which stimulate that speculation, to be concerning. Both practices lead to early speculators earning more than real builders and entrepreneurs. He also finds airdrop methods to be inefficient, for the most part.

Offering an alternative and combating some of these entrenched difficulties are goals DBA hopes to achieve through its network and incentive structure. To that end, DBA will generate a token for incentivizing community participation. There will be no ICO.

Part of that community structure will also include blockchain-based voting. Community members (voters), vetted and hand-picked advisors (project consultants), investor teams and entrepreneurs who submit projects will make up its organic structural pieces.

The engaged community is meant to be collaborative with each piece adding its own value. Token rewards are delivered to members who participate in the creation of value through activities such as identity registration, referrals and voting on submitted projects. Community members are KYC’d to protect the integrity of the processes. Projects nominated by the community are screened by the accelerator, while the centralized investment team makes final decisions on investment. The system is then able to reward the community nominators and supporters through tokens based on the final investment decision for the project.

Projects currently in the ecosystem include decentralized storage product Genaro and risk-management platform DRC.

Initial advisors to the ecosystem include Qtum founder Patrick Dai, Factom founder David Johnston, and Singapore Management University professor David Lee.

Factom’s Johnston also spoke at the event from the perspective of Factom’s experience in the marketplace and where he saw DBA adding value, particularly the incentive structure that will encourage industry investors and community members to work collaboratively, publicly and transparently, in contrast to the system of secretive deals that exists currently.

The next month will see the launch of the DBA mobile app and the first community votes on projects.

The U.S. Justice Department is looking into whether the price of bitcoin and other virtual currencies are being manipulated, according to a report inBloomberg that referenced four unnamed sources for the information.

Still in its early phases, the criminal probe will bring in other agencies, like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a regulator that oversees bitcoin derivatives, sources said.

On spot markets, like GDAX, Poloniex and Bitfinex, where cryptocurrencies change hands immediately, the price of bitcoin can vacillate wildly in a matter of hours. Starting in early 2017, the price of bitcoin ballooned from $1,000 to a record high of around $20,000 in mid-December. Currently, the price now sits in around $7,500.

Unlike in Japan, where virtual currency exchanges are subject the same rules and oversight as any other financial institutions and are required to register with the government, in the U.S. and other countries, cryptocurrency exchanges are still largely unregulated, opening up the doors to fraud and manipulation.

As for the U.S. Justice Department, its probe will focus on practices like spoofing, where a trader puts in a large buy or sell order only to withdraw the order as soon as the price starts to go up or down; and wash trading, where an investor simultaneously buys and sells assets to increase the volume of trading. Painting the tape, where traders trade amongst themselves to make it look like there is a flurry of activity going on, is yet another method of market manipulation.

All of these illegal trading practices are particularly effective in manipulating asset prices in relatively small markets. Cryptocurrency spot markets are said to handle only a small fraction of overall bitcoin trading, while bigger deals take place in over-the-counter (OTC) markets, like Gemini Global Trading, Circle and Cumberland Mining, where big investors, miners and hedge funds move hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies daily.

Earlier this year, Jordan Belfort, the original “Wolf of Wall Street,” who served jail time in connection with stock-market manipulation, warned bitcoin traders of “corruption” and “improper trading practices” in the markets and looming government crackdowns. “If you think the governments of the world don’t have the power to shut this down, you are very wrong. They do,” Belfort said in a video.

Aragon Founder Luis Cuende joined us to discuss their work on building tools for decentralized governance. We covered the origins of his deep drive, why this is a crucial fight for humanity and the tools that Aragon has built.

Topics discussed in this episode:

How Luis became an advisor to the European Commissionas as a 16-year old